Government redistribution is increasingly important in today's world. The effect of income distribution on industrialization and growth, and the causes of income redistribution have been studied in the contemporary literature. The normative significance of income redistribution, however, which...

This paper verifies the relationship between income inequality and pecuniary crimes. The elasticity of pecuniary crimes relative to inequality is 1.46, corroborating previous literature. Other factors important to decrease criminality are expanding job opportunities and a more efficient legal system

The purpose of this paper is to review recent data made available through the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) that include expenditures and asset valuations. The LIS data are augmented with comparable data from the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey. The surveys with expenditure data are reviewed in...

Although the Atkinson Inequality Index is widely used, this paper is the first attempt to empirically estimate the parameter on which that index is based. Forty-five years US income distribution and consumer confidence surveys allow one to estimate this Atkinson parameter of inequality aversion....

This working paper: (i) provides an overview of global, regional and national income inequalities based on the latest distribution data from the World Bank, UNU-WIDER and Eurostat; (ii) discusses the negative implications of rising income inequality for development; (iii) calls for placing...

This chapter explores the relationship between poverty and aging, in terms of its measurement and trends, as well as its alleviation, with particular attention to the most vulnerable individuals at each end of the age distribution. The measurement addresses both the definition of poverty and its...

This paper reviews some of the central issues that arise in thinking about the motives for, politics of, constraints on and measurement of, redistribution. Amongst the themes are: the potential usefulness of apparently inefficient policy instruments in overcoming the self-selection constraints...

This paper examines changes in after-tax income inequality among tax filers between 1991 and 2006. In particular, how changes in wages, capital income, and tax policy contribute to changes in income inequality is investigated. To examine the role of these three possible contributors to the...

There is an increasing literature that discusses how to measure the middle class. Some approaches are based on an arbitrary definition such as income quartiles or the poverty line. Recently, Foster and Wolfson developed a methodology which lacks of arbitrariness that enables us to compare the...

Different concepts of inequality lead to different positions in discussions about whether economic growth leads to increasing inequality. This study investigates how over 1,100 young adults in Mozambique perceive inequality and whether their perceptions are based on relative or absolute terms....